LEARNING, it seems, is so last century, if 33-year-old DJ, model and TV presenter turned activist Jameela Jamil’s week has been anything to go by.
Having praised Ellen DeGeneres’s act of sitting next to former US President George Bush at an event, she responded to an avalanche of criticism by reading up on the Bush years which started when she was a 14-year-old growing up in the UK. Her conclusion was that his was a ‘heinous presidency’ and she hadn’t realised because her school had not taught it. She admitted a gap in her knowledge.
You would think that would be the end of the matter, but by admitting she did not know the full story – the war in Iraq, his opposition to same-sex marriages – Jamil made what seems to be an unforgivable error. She had commented without knowing the full facts, but worse than that, when picked up on it she had educated herself and Changed Her Mind. Twitter was awash with suspicion, Jameela Jamil was trending and not in a way that she would have liked.
Ok, it would be nice if we could all know everything about everything, but we don’t, despite what this year’s hapless bunch of business suits who are Lord Sugar’s prospective apprentices would have us believe. It’s surely better to admit a gap in our knowledge, than the alternatives of making stuff up.
Politicians are famously afflicted by this need to appear to know it all. And how unforgiving are we when they don’t? Remember Natalie Bennett’s “brain fade” and Dianne Abbott’s inability to say how much new police officers would cost?
Also, I mean I have to ask, how clued up were we at 14 about the politics of another country? I was a modern studies ace, but my main knowledge about US politics came from the Frankie Goes to Hollywood TwoTribes video where a Ronald Reagan lookalike beat the merry hell out of a Chernenko lookalike in a bear pit, and the international spectators around the pit started brawling. Deep.
The biggest problem for me with the whole stushie is that it seems there’s no space for fresh learning, and then learning from that.
Jamil’s initial support for DeGeneres may have been an emotional response but once Jamil had learnt the facts she had readjusted her view. Her transparency is refreshing - too often celebs or politicians refuse to acknowledge those wee knowledge holes.
Jamil is the perfect antidote to the know-nothing, but appear to know-it-all bozos who have reappeared from all our school debating days. There is surely a lesson in there for us all. Own the gap. Keep learning, keep readjusting.
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